AquaDom, the world largest cylindrical aquarium has burst, killing all 1.500 fishes inside and spilling 1 million litres of water through the building, onto the streets nearby.
The aquarium located in a hotel lobby in Berlin burst on early Friday morning, heavily damaging the lobby and flooding the street. More the 100 emergency responders came to help at the site; fortunately, only two people were injured by shards falling off the 16 meters high cylinder. “The aquarium is damaged, water is leaking. The situation is not clear at the moment,” Berlin’s Fire Brigade tweeted.
The city’s Mayor Franziska Giffey said that despite all damages they were lucky it happened so early: “if this hadn’t happened at 5:45 am but even just one hour later, then we would probably have had terrible human loss to report.” All 400 guests of the hotel have been evacuated and moved to other hotels in the city. As per police reports, temperature in the morning was -7 degrees Celsius.
The cause remains unknown at the moment, but police does not think it was a criminal act. The AquaDom was opened in 2003 and gained the Guinness World Record for being the world’s largest cylindrical aquarium. Filled with 1 million litres of water, it contained 1,500 tropical fish of over 100 species, most of which have died due to the incident. Sandra Weeser, a member of the German federal parliament who was a guest of the hotel told local television she saw a “large parrotfish lying on the ground, frozen”.
The aquarium was 16 meter high and had a built-in transparent elevator that offered a 10 minutes ride. Both the hotel, in which the AquaDom was place and the elevator company have announced they are closed until further notice.
Source: bbc.com
